Compromise Proposal

Dear Alumni, Plaintiffs, and Fired Board Members:

For too long we have fought over the most simple of issues, and to no avail. Thousands of dollars have been spent on court and legal fees, and even now the ARP Denomination and Erskine College churns with anger and discontent. All because of… us.

So let’s fix it.

We fired fourteen Trustees because the board was too big, we claim. You didn’t like that and sued us. But why fight about this? After all, we’ve argued from the start that it didn’t matter who was released – that they all served honorably. So let’s get rid of the other half of the board and settle the whole issue. Let’s remove the other sixteen.

Nobody loses here:

• The Board is smaller, which makes everybody happy.
• “Your” trustees remain, which makes you happy.
• “Our” trustees are gone, but since we have said repeatedly, consistently, and truthfully that ideology had nothing to do with the firings, this won’t matter. Trust us.

I have not made a mistake, have I? We are not claiming ideology had anything to do with the firings, so it shouldn’t matter who is fired, should it?*

Capish?

It might also be nice for Synod to promise, in writing, to never fire a trustee again without cause. You know, just in case we become even more conservative and want to fire some more liberals.

Sincerely,

Temperance Dogood
Concerned Citizen
Trusting Admirer of the Commission Report

*Yes, the Report does reference “irreconcilable” differences in the Board, but we have never claimed to fire people because they did not agree with our vision of Erskine. At least we never claimed this out loud.